The Comanche Steal

One day in the summer of 1872 two or three buffalo hunters were riding through the favorite grazing grounds of the then countless herds of bison in southwestern Kansas when they came upon a camp of five men. Three of the men were A. J. Mowery and James Duncan, of Doniphan County, and Alexander Mills, of Topeka; the other two were residents of Hutchinson, probably C. C. Beemis and Major Bowlus, but of that I am not certain. The five were busily engaged in
working out a plan for the organization and subsequent looting of Comanche County. They had their plans about completed, but needed a county attorney and proposed to one of the buffalo hunters, J. S. Cox, that he take the position. Cox was not a lawyer, but they
assured him that a total lack of legal knowledge was not an objection but rather an advantage. To have a county attorney who was a lawyer in the organization they were forming might be embarrassing. Cox seems to have fallen in with the proposition in that free and easy way of buffalo hunters, not regarding it seriously. The quintet then unfolded to him their plan,
which was really charmingly simple. It was to organize the county, send Mowery to the Legislature to
secure the passage of a law authorizing Comanche
County to issue bonds for the building of a court house,
building bridges and $20,000 or $30,000 for the payment
of general expenses. The second part of the interesting
program was the organization of school districts
and the voting of almost unlimited school bonds.

The new county attorney listened in amazement. He
knew that within the 900 square miles of territory they
proposed to include in the county, there was hardly a
single bona fide inhabitant and not a dollar's worth of
taxable property, except some roving herds of cattle
which could easily be driven out of the reach of the
assessor. He was curious to know who would buy the
bonds issued by such a brazenly fraudulent organization
and was told that in Topeka there was just as
good a market for a fraudulent bond as a genuine,
the only difference being the price.

So, with no one to molest or make them afraid, the
band of thieves matured their plans and put them into
execution. From St. Joe hotel registers, supplied presumably
by Mowery, the names of residents were gathered.
A census taker was appointed, one A. Updegraff, the son of an honest father and mother who had
fallen among evil companions and who was persuaded
to become the handy tool of thieves, although he probably
received but little share of the plunder. Within
the brief period of ten days or less Updegraff, according
to the record, rode or walked several hundred miles
over trackless prairies of Comanche County, gathered
the names of 600 bona fide inhabitants, solemnly
swore to the correctness of the list, and forwarded his
report to the governor's office at Topeka, and on October
28, 1873, the proclamation was issued declaring the
county duly organized.

Election day was drawing near and according to program Andrew Mowery was selected by the five to
represent the county in the lower house of the Legislature.
It was an easy and inexpensive election. Two
hundred and forty names were copied from the convenient
St. Joe hotel register and voted for Mowery.
Certificates of election were forwarded to the secretary
of state and at the opening of the legislative session in
January, 1874, Mowery appeared with his credentials
and was sworn in as a member of the law-making body.
Everything moved with the smoothness of well oiled machinery.

The fraudulent commissioners were authorized
to issue bonds for various purposes and did issue
$29,000 to C. C. Beemis to build a court house. Getting
court house bonds was Beemis' specialty. It will be recalled
by those who have read the section, "The Looting
of a County," that the Barber county commissioners
issued at different periods to this same Beemis
some $65,000 in warrants, afterwards funded into
bonds, to build a court house. In addition to the court
house bonds the county commissioners issued $23,000
bridge bonds and $20,000 bonds to pay general expenses,
in all $72,000. Then came the second part of
the program, the organization of school districts and
the issuing of bonds. This opened an inviting and extensive
field, but it was through the school bond steal
that the looters came to grief. School district No. 1
was organized about the county seat, in which there
was one cabin, named in honor of the then secretary of
state, Smallwood, who was also one of the board designated
by law to care for and invest the school funds of
the state. District No. 1 issued bonds to the extent
of $2,000 and Representative Mowery came with the
bonds to Topeka and offered them for sale to the permanent
school fund. With the approval of Secretary
Smallwood and the superintendent of public instruction,
a gentleman by the name of McCarty, Mowery sold the bonds for $1,750 and either pocketed the
money himself or divided his loot with his confederates.

It was planned to load the school fund with at least
$40,000 more but happily the attorney general interfered
with the arrangement. The secretary of state
and state superintendent attempted to clear their
skirts, but if they were not positively dishonest they
certainly were criminally negligent of their duty.

Having apparently concluded that they had gathered
about all the harvest of loot there was to gather, the
organizers of Comanche abandoned it to the buffalo
and the coyote, and in 1876 Mowery, who had gone back
to Doniphan County, somehow persuaded his neighbors
to send him to the Legislature from that county, although
the record of his villainy had become generally
known. The Legislature of 1876 expelled him and at
the instance of the attorney general he was arrested,
charged with having forged the school bonds he had
sold to the state. When notified that he was to be arrested
he fled the state, but was apprehended over in
Missouri and brought back for trial. For want of positive
evidence of the forgery, the county attorney of
Shawnee County dismissed the suit and Mowery went
free.

It is a shameful fact that not one of the thieves engaged
in the fraudulent organization of Barber, Comanche
and other counties was ever punished by law for
his crime. If a citizen buys a horse in perfect good
faith and afterwards finds that it was stolen he must
restore it to the owner when the latter proves his title.
The fact that he was an innocent purchaser does not
save him from loss, but although it was common knowledge
that the region in which Comanche County was
located was in 1872, 1873, and 1874 an uninhabited
wilderness, the purchasers of the fraudulent bonds were
not required to beware of their purchase. The courts protected them, saddled the burden of the utterly
fraudulent obligations on subsequent settlers, who had
no part in their making, and then failed to mete out
any punishment to the thieves. No wonder the man
who is serving a term of years in the penitentiary for
stealing a calf or a few dollars, cannot see the justice
of a law which punishes him with great severity, while
thieves who boldly plundered through fraudulent bond
deals to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars
are permitted to go scot free and even pose as honorable
citizens.

Most of the plunderers who operated in Barber and
Comanche Counties have gone to their final rewards.
The last time I saw the census taker of the fraudulent
organization of Comanche he was suffering from a
severe bullet wound received in an impromptu duel on
the streets of Dodge City with the celebrated Bat Masterson, the other party to the shooting. He revived
from that to die later from smallpox and was laid
away by the gamblers and demimonde of that then
wild frontier town. The others, who were much more
guilty than Al Updegraff, have gone, I do not know
where, but if there is an old-fashioned orthodox hell
they are probably meditating on their past sins as they
roast in the sulphurous habitations of the damned.

The Approximate Location of Smallwood, Comanche County, KansasView this 15 August 1991 USGS photo on TerraServer USA

The Approximate Location of Smallwood

My childhood home was the homestead of my great grandfather Loren Ferrin. It was about 2 miles north of the supposed location of Smallwood, Comanche County, Kansas. My grandfather, Ernest Leroy Ferrin, pointed out the location to me many times when we drove past it, just as I'm sure it had been pointed out to him by my great grandfather.

The location: take the road east to Sun City from Wilmore past Wade-A-While Park, then turn north on the road which goes towards the old Valtos Richardson place which now belongs to Wendell Unruh. The road runs in a northeasterly direction before it goes through an autogate. To the north of that road I just described, over a small bluff and to the north of Spring Creek, is a fairly flat valley area. That, I was told, was the location of Smallwood.

You can also see the location of Smallwood on this map of Comanche County.

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